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Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword. Eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed there was no post last week…. well, about that. Um, gee. I read the preamble and didn’t do it.

I haven’t looked at a solution or read any of the other blogs, so if I get a chance I’ll have a go. It’s just that the preamble made my head spin and I put it at the back of the pile. Repeatedly.

So we’ll count Brimstone as a loss and sorry if you’re reading Brimstone.

It is that time of year when there is an annual event and usually an easier puzzle to go with it. I found out at the end that if I’d just googled the answer then the entire mystery would have been gone. Good thing I didn’t do that!

Jago has oft been gentle – and we have a pretty large grid (anyone do the Maltby puzzles in the Wall Street Journal? It looks like one of his grids), an unclued entry and some modification of some answers.

There is no 1 across, its the unclued entry, so we have to go all the way to a 11 across test. And it looks like it should be PERSIAN but there’s only three letters. Sounds like something is being removed (brilliant deducation, George). Next up is RE(STRAIN)T so we hae a grid beginning to form.

Working around RESTRAINT is appears that part of 1 across is VANISHES… THE LADY VANISHES? That would explain how AIRCRAFT CARRIER could go in without CARRIE and PERSIAN without SIAN.

The rest of the gridfill was pretty quick, though as usual I got down to the point where three of my last four entries had to be thematic, with the last one in being GRADATORY without ADA. I did enjoy entering SKATEBOARD without KATE and although all the letters were already in place by the time I got around to it, I liked GRENADINE without NADINE.

Goody, a full grid. Aaaaand… now what?

Unfortunately this did involve Googling “The Old Swan” to find the answer. Agatha Christie, who is hiding in a column, took a little sabbatical there.

Weird ending – I think there might have been room to hide something more thematic there rather than giving it away in the title. But a quick victory is good after deliberately avoiding a puzzle for a while.

2015 tally: 8-0-1

Feel free to tell me I should have persevered with the cubey thing and see you next week when Kruger has a long liquid company

Having never finished even half of a Listener crossword, this one went in in just over 30minutes. I know the connection between The Old Swan and Lady Mallowan and 1ac was as a result obvious. The rest was just straightforward. Right, back to normal now!